From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwasteswastes[plural] literary a large area of land where there are very few people, plants, or animalswastes of the icy wastes of Antarcticaicy/frozen/snowy etc wastes → waste
Examples from the Corpus
icy/frozen/snowy etc wastes• The remaining one-third includes frozen wastes, deserts, mines and towns.• They were building railways and digging roads in the frozen wastes of Siberia. 